


The Itinerant Heart

by stitchy



Series: Dumbledore's Résumé [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Post-Movie 2: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Summer of 1899, The Blood Pact, Young Albus Dumbledore, the mechanics of magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 15:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17083241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stitchy/pseuds/stitchy
Summary: Few recall that Albus Dumbledore’s first job out of Hogwarts was at St. Mungo’s, but even fewer know he initially planned to become an Unspeakable. Either might have furnished him with a more useful expertise, by the time he gets his hands on the blood pact.





	The Itinerant Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't seen much ficcy speculation of what sort of magic the blood pact is or what it might take to break it, so I put my top man on it.
> 
> Also, you bet your ass there's a Honeydukes story, so check out the other fic in this series.

    Several lifetimes ago, it seemed, Albus Dumbledore had wanted to become an Unspeakable. This was, of course, before he vowed never to work for the Ministry, and before his former Headmaster Fronsac had offered him a post at Hogwarts. It was before his awkward year at St. Mungo’s and his more fondly remembered stint at Honeydukes. This was even before the flurry of job-offering owls from several of his acclaimed wizarding correspondents upon his graduation.

    The winter of his seventh year at Hogwarts there had been a terrible scandal with one of the Department of Mysteries' employees that intrigued him more than any offhandedly imagined career as an Auror or an alchemist. Despite the Ministry's best efforts to contain the fall out of an ill-fated experiment, the usual seal of secrecy that surrounded Unspeakables was broken. While the poor victim herself died at St. Mungo’s, out of the public eye, there was no concealing that descendants of people she had affected while running afoul of Time were suddenly ‘un-born’ or that the Tuesday following her return lasted two and a half days while Thursday flew by in four hours.

    To calm the community, the Ministry publicly guaranteed an end to Time travel exceeding five hours and disclosed what they could about the Department of Mysteries, including the names of three more of its topics of study; Space, Thought, and _Love_. Albus could still remember the typeset of the word on the page of the Daily Prophet. ‘Love,’ with curlycue serifs that looped into hearts. The advanced study of Time, Space, and Thought were all very well and good, and he had already gleaned from his mentors that learning the nature of Prophecy and Death was also on offer to Unspeakables, but Love... He folded the news clipping reverently in the pages of his journal, between the first essay he’d ever had published in _Transfiguration Today_ and his own recipe for the perfect chocolate to cure a dementor attack. He went without sleep for nearly a week thinking about Unspeakables while staring up at the gold and red canopy over his bed (and _not_ at the vexingly handsome face of Wesley Buckram sleeping in the next bunk over).

    If such an immutable magic force as Time could be changed what else might be? Might Love, which had clearly tampered with him, in turn be altered? Could he correct himself if given full access to its mystery? He pondered ancient texts and posed oblique questions to his professors, but none would say. The only thing for it, he determined, was to qualify for the Department of Mysteries and discover the truth for himself. His grades were already excellent in all the necessary N.E.W.T. subjects, it was just a matter of sitting the exams and making a good first impression with the right people. As Albus had already become acquainted with Minister Spavin, he felt sure it was possible.

     Of course, before he ever got the chance to take the mystery of Love to task for the woe it had caused him, someone came along that changed his mind on the matter.

-

    “When we find the wand, how do we decide which of us should be its master?”

    The question had been troubling Albus. The Resurrection Stone was not for continuous use, the cloak could be shared if it was large enough and was hardly necessary to begin with- but surely such a powerful wand as The Elder would dislike being passed around like a spare quill. Of the Hallows, its use was the most open-ended, and he had a habit of requiring definitive answers. He plucked a long leaf of grass and started wrapping it around his finger, nervously. Gellert didn’t look up from his book or make any signal that this was the first time he’d considered the question.

    “Does it matter? We’ll both use it.” Gellert turned a page, without so much as a furrow of his brow.

    Albus had never heard of such a thing. Each witch or wizard had their own wand, suited to them in particular. You could win the allegiance of an opponent's wand in a duel in some circumstances, or inherit one as he had from his father, but that could hardly be described as sharing. If Percival Dumbledore had ever returned from Azkaban, he would have gladly returned his wand to him, but would have expected to buy a new one for himself rather than go on using it in turns. He would do, though, if it brought his father back, but there were few people he would consider making such a concession for. To be constantly exchanging the means of one’s power with someone else seemed extremely vulnerable and intimate. Not that he objected to becoming more familiar with Gellert, but in his imagination this would start with exchanging confidences, and then if that was well received, kisses. Albus felt himself start to sweat. The sun had moved since they first sat under the tree, and the shade with it.

    “I’ve never shared my wand,” he said lightly. He tried to be as cool and casual about it as Gellert. “Used my mother’s once or twice in the kitchen, but...”

    There was a clap as Gellert shut his book. “There’s a first time for everything, you know,” he said in a low rumble. Albus recognized the tone as being reserved for one of their secrets. He listened hungrily. As elegant as a cat, Gellert sat up from leaning back against the tree and turned to look at Albus as he fished a hand into his waistcoat. “Give me your wand. I’ll give you mine.”

    “I...” Albus hesitated. Was this a test? Gellert was always posing him with hypotheticals, and he rarely knew if he had answered correctly.

    “Go on.” Gellert offered his own wand, laid across both palms. It was made of amber colored wood, relatively short, and more branch-like in shape than the English fashion. His expression was unreadable.

    Albus’ hand hovered, close enough to sense the latent heat and magic of both wizard and wand. He wanted to take it. He wanted to offer Gellert his own too. Was it allowed? He thought to glance over his shoulder towards the road where there might be passers-by, but found himself unable to look away. With eyes fixed on Gellert, he drew his own wand and switched them.

    “All right.”

    Gellert wrapped his fingers around Albus’ wand and lifted it along with an eyebrow. “And how does that feel?”

    There was no chance of Albus admitting the way his heart raced, so he just nodded and gave Gellert’s wand a cursory swish. It sparked and thrummed in his hand, and for a moment he could smell citrus like he’d just started peeling an orange. With Albus’ wand, Gellert made a point of light that glowed blue and then transformed into the blossom of a cornflower. Then two, then three. He twisted his wrist delicately and the little bouquet floated closer, then set itself in Albus’ lapel.

    “Go ahead,” Gellert grinned. “Charm me.”

    Pointing the borrowed wand, Albus cast the most benign thing he could think of. “Rictusempra!”

    Instantly, Gellert flopped into the grass, laughing and clutching his sides. “A t-tickling ch-charm?” he gasped. His golden hair pillowed on the ground like a halo, his delight angelic. Albus found him to be beautiful even when he was being stone faced and serious, but this was all the more appealing. “You don’t even need a wand for that!” Gellert then overcame the enchantment and pounced on Albus to prove it.

    “That’s! That’s cheating!” Albus howled. Belly burning from laughter, he held out for as long as he thought he could get away with it. He was too amenable to being pawed at and pinned under Gellert, and it wouldn’t do to have his longing discovered before he was was certain of what to say. “Mercy, mercy!” he finally begged. The hands on his body stopped tickling at once, but lingered.

    “Does that settle it?” Gellert looked down at him and gently righted the flowers that had been torn from his buttonhole.

    “I just would hate to fight over it,” Albus said, keeping very still. He was flustered, but he didn’t want to be the one to break away from their half embrace first. “I would never want to hurt you, even by accident.”

    Gellert leaned away and laughed. “Then we’ll both have to keep our hands to ourselves.” He picked up their wands from where they had dropped in the grass and tossed Albus’ back to him, as though it were no more precious than a matchstick.

    They headed back to the village shortly after that, but Albus kept worrying over the matter for days. He wanted to work together with Gellert for a better future, and for their passions to be matched in one another. They _should_ challenge each other and push and pull towards their goals. He’d done enough group projects to know that when people who were so skilled and so driven collaborated, there was always a risk of healthy competition boiling over into conflict. And one-sided attraction could sour even the greatest friendships, as it had with he and Wesley in sixth year. There had to be a way to ensure their prosperous partnership. _And_ , a dark and longing corner of his heart added, do so without forbidding that they lay hands on one and other.

    Soon, he had found his solution in the ancient tomes of the Bagshot library. Albus had Gellert meet him at their tree just before dawn so that he had time to explain. It was a blood ritual devised by the Brittonic chieftains, long before the Romans had ever come to their island and Latinized their spellwork. To declare peace between their clans, they would form a pact where neither could attack the other and seal it with the union of their heirs.

    Gellert crossed his arms. “I don’t wish to ruin your plans, I think it’s very well that we should never fight, but-”  
  
    “But?” Albus squinted down at his pocket watch, waiting for the hand ending in a little golden moon to turn into a sun. It was almost time.

    “-Neither of us has marriageable heirs.”

    “Well.” Albus gulped. He felt a nervous babble coming on, and wasn’t at all surprised when his mouth ran away with him. “It doesn’t have to be wedding, I think. I mean- a kiss will do. It’s just an ingredient. All spells have some kind of ingredient, even if it’s just intention and ability. It’s like the dawn light and the blood!” _Ugh_. He was starting to tremble. Why couldn’t he stop? “But in the day of the book’s translator, people didn’t go around kissing people they weren’t married to, so the Briton’s version of the ritual-”

    “Albus, please.” Gellert held up his hands in surrender.

    “Huh?”

    “I’ll kiss you.” He stepped closer, crossing half the distance between them and then paused. “But you have to say that you want me to.”

    Albus could feel the watch tick in his shaking hand, like a countdown. It was now or never, wasn’t it? He clutched it so tight he thought the glass might break. “I want you to kiss me,” he admitted.

    Before another two ticks of his watch could pass Gellert crowded him, wrapping one arm and then another around the small of his back with all the paralytic effects of a Full Body-Bind Curse. It relieved Albus’ tremble at once, as he thought _He wants me, too!_ He melted into Gellert, no longer able to feel the tick of his watch as time melted as well, becoming uncountable. Gellert bent to meet Albus’ lips so slowly that he thought he might wither and die while he was still tracing the tip of his nose across his cheek. Finally he arrived, kissing Albus so soundly he abandoned the restraint he’d been clinging to. He dropped his watch on its chain and threw his arms around Gellert’s neck, allowing himself to be pulled on tiptoe. His fingers tangled into his collar and nape, locking them together as he savored the proof that he had been too quick to judge Love for it’s blunder. He really could be as content in love as any other wizard. And who would dare judge, when they were masters of the Deathly Hallows?

    Suddenly he remembered the task at hand. He broke the kiss reluctantly and dropped his forehead to Gellert’s shoulder in exasperation. “We’re supposed to say the incantation first,” he mumbled. “Incantation first, then...” Kissing. Union. _Love_. “-and then the blood.”

    Gellert puffed a single laugh. “Gealladh Air Gràdh,” he supplied in a solemn whisper.

    “Gealladh Air Gràdh,” Albus repeated, their lips already reconnecting.

-

 _You fool, you should have sworn on your life,_ Albus thought when he next saw the blood pact pendant.

    He pocketed it hastily and determined himself to be a pleasant host to Newt, despite his delivery of the wretched thing. The humiliating reminder of his greatest mistake. He felt as though it might burn straight through his clothes and into his chair as they sat at tea. He tried to decide if Newt identifying the blood pact for what it was meant he had any more insight into its nature, or if he had simply cast an identifying charm.

    “Newt, I know you have an enviable library. I don’t suppose you’ve read _Celtic Rituals of Yore,_  or anything like it?”

    “I’m afraid my time for reading outside of my own specialty is limited, Professor.” Newt sipped his tea, thoughtfully. “Are you aware there are dozens of new species of beetle described to science every year?”

    Albus grimaced and set his cup and saucer aside. “That may account for the creepy-crawlies I get whenever I enter one of the greenhouses.”

    Thankfully, Newt did not press Albus for the purpose of his question, as he had hardly recovered from the sudden reemergence of the blood pact himself. After Newt left he dug the pendant out of his pocket and cast it on to his desk with disdain like knuts to a beggar’s cup, though it was his own deficiency that had him feeling so uncharitable.

    It all could have been so simple. He could have sworn an Unbreakable Vow like every other idiot wizard. Yes, it would have killed him to stop Grindelwald, but mutually assured destruction was better than watching people die while having his hands tied or more recently, admonitored. He rubbed his wrists where until just a few hours ago, the cuffs had chaffed. He was still as idiotic as he had been at seventeen not to see it coming. Unfortunately, at seventeen he had been a _romantic_ idiot wizard. If there had been a passage in _Celtic Rituals_ detailing the consequences of the blood pact, he hadn’t bothered to read them in his lovelorn haze. He could take a guess, now. As an Unbreakable Vow was sworn on life so that upon breaking, the vow maker could not continue to live, this pact was sworn with Love as the collateral. His old, inscrutable nemesis.

    Albus sighed and kicked his heels up on his desk to think. The absence of love was a sacrifice he was prepared to make, absolutely. In the past neither he or nor object of his affection had been worthy, after all. There was no one now, to dissuade him. And in the future? This inevitable conflict with Grindelwald was likely to kill them both. What great love was he saving his heart for, really, if not the Greater Good?

    Determining that he would be willing to pay that price was one thing, but how was it done? Magic founded on life could be destroyed by that which destroyed life, but magic founded in love... What could destroy love? It was more resilient than any nameable force. He had chosen it to swear upon exactly because of its strength. Death did not stop love, nor was it guaranteed to be a victim to the ravages of time or strain of distance, if it was true. As a younger man, his capacity for love had persisted despite his self-loathing, the greatest destructive power he had known at the time. In the intervening years, Albus had never quite found the antidote to that, either.

 _Antidote?_ Hmm.

    His chair screeched on the stone floor as he swung his legs off his desk and grabbed the pendant. He examined its heft, its temperature, and even held it up to his ear. It was possible he’d been thinking about this the wrong way. Maybe the mechanics of the magic were analogous to other vessels. As a Horcrux that housed a soul was not destroyed by assaults on the soul, like a dementor, but rather by destroying the container. There were incurable venoms and unstoppable fires he could try. Or perhaps, the characteristic of the blood itself was to be reversed. It was a magic material that could be put beyond repair, or else there wouldn’t be vampires and maledictuses!

    Bitterly Albus thought that he ought to have stuck it out at St. Mungo’s after all. Blood curses might have been a more useful expertise come this moment than how to contextualize Gamp’s Laws for a twelve year old. It was a shame he had burned his bridges with the brilliant Head Healer Pinkley, or else he might send an owl for her opinion. Once again, he had been thwarted there by misplaced love, though at least that time he had been on the receiving end. Even if he hadn’t been able to help it, he still felt badly about the scene he had caused at the reception desk as he quit. The portrait of Dilys Derwent that hung at both St. Mungo’s and Hogwarts _still_ chided him about the bogeys that had to be professionally scrubbed off of her.

    Now that was someone who's discretion and knowledge he could trust. Dilys had never made a peep about the sensitive conversation she had heard with Pinkley, and she had over two hundred years more know-how regarding both magic and blood. If anyone at his disposal was likely to have notions about the two combined, it would be her. With a little luck, she might be inhabiting her portrait there in the castle that evening. Albus looked up from the pendant. The picture of Muldoon Cragg that hung in his office was out visiting with a friend hung in the dungeon, so he pocketed the thing and stepped out into the hall. One door down was the Gryffindor common room.

    “My dear,” he said to the Fat Lady. “Would you mind asking the portrait of Headmaster Derwent to visit me in my office?”

    The Fat Lady fixed him with a calculating look. “Only if you’ll come play cards with me later. Half the house is on the exchange trip to Castelobruxo and I’m bored stiff!”

    “You have my word,” he assured her with a little bow.

    Sitting back down at in his desk, Albus felt like he was making enough headway that he deserved a reward. He popped open his box of sweets and selected a fizzing whizbee. He had just finished floating a few inches off his chair when the face of Dilys Derwent ducked into the empty frame over his desk, ancient and shrewd.

    When the dust had cleared after that fateful summer, the first owl Albus received that was not bearing a letter of condolence came from the Healer-in-Charge of the Janus Thickey Ward for permanent spell damage. His N.E.W.T examiner seemed to be on a one-witch mission to find him a position, and so the powers that be at St. Mungo’s were persuaded to offer him an internship despite his having missed the first week of the program. While weighing the option, it occured to Albus that he might avoid the refrain of ‘Sorry For Your Losses’ and inane introductions to every bloody person in the hospital by joining late. After all of the summer’s death and guilt he was inclined to do penance, but not _that_ much. He took the position for lack of any objection, and the first face to greet him upon his arrival was this same portrait of Dilys Derwent.

    “Trainee Dumbledore,” she tutted, as she stepped fully into view. Tiny spectacles hung on a lanyard around her neck and were grasped in one hand. She pointed at him, reproachfully. “Still haven’t set that right, have you?”

    Albus rolled his eyes. “Every time, Dilys?”

    “That’s the trouble with old teachers, I’m afraid,” she said. She lowered herself into Muldoon Cragg’s vacant chair with great care. “You’ll always be the young lad, a week late with a broken nose.”

    Relative to her centuries of existence, Albus supposed that even forty-four with thinning hair must seem quaint. He cleared his throat. “And how is Mina?”

    Dilys laughed heartily. “Head Healer Pinkley is just fine. I’m sure she’s forgotten all about you.”

    It was just as well. For the duration of his year at St. Mungo’s, he had stuck close to the only other intern on the ward, Mindwell Pinkley, rather than socialize with other departments. She was good at her job in a way that he found easy to praise, but his undivided attention gave the poor witch the wrong impression. In the end, he had firmly put his foot in his mouth when she suggested an engagement.

    “Sorry again, about the mess.”

    “Oh, it’s a hospital,” she waved her hand dismissively. “Only a shade more disgusting than a school chock-full of adolescents.”

    Albus laughed as a recent incident in the prefect’s lavatory swam into memory. “True enough. Now, I have a bit of magic I could use your help with...”

-

     Every available line of inquiry had to be followed, no matter how uncomfortable or dangerous. It was what the memory of Ariana deserved, as well as every student and patient he had ever been entrusted with, and even Mina Pinkley and the family of Wesley Buckram who had long since died in The Great War. He threw theories back and forth with Dilys. He picked the Fat Lady’s brain over a game of rummy. Before turning in for the night, he wrote to Bathilda asking to borrow _Celtic Rituals_ , though there was every chance young Grindelwald had destroyed it before fleeing Godric’s Hollow. He even sent an owl requesting an appointment with the Department of Mysteries. Just as there had once been a Tuesday that overstayed it’s time, it had been too long since he had first made his mistake, and there had been too many lives lost. He would devote every spare moment of his attention to ending Grindelwald’s campaign. He could only hope it didn’t cut short his Thursday, in the end, but if it did he could make his peace with that. His love and care for all whom he had ever known would sustain him until it was put right.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm @stitchyarts on both tumblr and twitter, if you want to give a follow! I make art and some cool sewn fandom dolls, etc.


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